In a continuing effort to improve the quality of shipping fruits, we, the inventors, typically hybridize a large number of peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, and cherry seedlings each year. We also grow a lesser number of open pollinated seeds of each of these fruits. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of plum tree which has been denominated varietally as ‘Plumsweet XVII’.
During a typical blooming season we isolate as seed parents both individual and groups of different plum and interspecific hybrid trees by covering them with screen houses. A hive of bees is placed inside each such house, and bouquets to provide pollen from different plum, apricot, and interspecific hybrid trees are placed in buckets near the trees approximately every two days for the duration of the bloom. During 2008, one such house containing ‘Plumsweet VI’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 18,687) interspecific tree was crossed by us in this manner. To pollinate this interspecific, we selected bouquets from several sources of plum trees without keeping specific written details. Upon reaching maturity the fruit from this interspecific tree was harvested, and the seeds were removed, cracked, stratified and germinated as a group with the label “H22”. They were grown as seedlings on their own root in our greenhouse and upon reaching dormancy transplanted to a cultivated area of our experimental orchard located near Le Grand, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). During the spring of 2012 the claimed variety was selected by us as a single plant from the group of seedlings described above. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of plum tree, we asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproduction of plant and fruit characteristics were true to the original tree in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of ‘Nemaguard’ (unpatented) rootstock upon which the present variety was compatible and true to type.
The present variety is most similar to its seed parent, ‘Plumsweet VI’ interspecific tree (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 18,687), by being self-unfruitful and by producing fruit that is a green and red two-tone in skin color, full red in flesh color, firm in texture, juicy, and sweet in flavor, but is distinguished therefrom by being easier to set, by producing fruit that is larger in size and that matures about five days earlier.
The present variety is also similar to ‘Blackred I’ interspecific tree (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 19,537), by being self-unfruitful, by blooming in the early season, and by producing fruit that is full red in flesh color, firm in texture, juicy, clingstone in type, and oblate in shape, but is distinguished therefrom by producing fruit that is larger in size, that is somewhat sweeter in flavor, that is a green and red two-tone instead of blackish red in skin color, and that matures about five days later.